Boxoffice-November.2001

Qpvet
r:oLfcieN op
AppeccioN
lABOR-Op-L,OVe AbApCKClON Op
1or5 op x:be RiNgs" soqrs
xzpue x:o r:be peace's beApsn
by' cbRisciNe locoes
7The quest began a millennium
ago and whisked the Bearer of
the One "Ring" to exotic faraway
lands. That is, Elijah
Wood was tapped circa mid- 1999 to play
Frodo Baggins in New Line's epic adaptation
of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy,
filmed on location in New Zealand.
Wood, now 20, was a child actor on the
rise around the time his contemporary
(and co-star in 1993's "The Good Son"),
Macaulay Culkin, was skyrocketing to
fame slapping himself silly in endless
talk-show reenactments of his Edvard
Munchian "Home Alone" aftershave
scene. While Culkin's celebrity went the
way of his baby teeth, Wood continued
to build a reputation as a young star
whose wise-beyond-his-years aura negated
the need for a gimmick or catchphrase.
Wood's footing in Hollywood
became less sure as he vacillated between
the artistic ("The Ice Storm") and the
exploitative ("Deep Impact," "The Faculty"),
but the same magic that turned
Kiwi country into Middle Earth transformed
the actor who not long ago was
wrangling with adolescence in the bigscreen
version of "Flipper" into the
shining hero of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic
good-versus-evil quest fantasy.
As Frodo, who inherits a ring of great
but inherently evil power from his uncle
Bilbo, and must return it—with the help
of a fellowship of elves, dwarves, wizards,
humans and fellow-hobbits—to its
place of origin in order to destroy it,
Wood himself faces the equally daunting
challenge of embodying a character
whose iconic, archetypal status is rivaled
only by that of its source material, the
Bible of fantasy literature.
40 BOXOFKIC'K